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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

SINGAPORE – Agoda.com, Asia’s leading
hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), has
prepared some great hotel deals for Spain’s squishiest, goopiest and messiest
festival – the raucous free-for-all of La Tomatina, the tomato festival, often
called the world’s largest food fight. This year it takes place on August 28.

There
are several stories as to the origin of the festival, which takes place in the
town of Buñol, about 35 km west of Valencia. The most popular one says it began
in the mid-1940s when local youths got into a fight and started hurling the
first thing they could get their hands on – tomatoes. For some reason, it
caught on as an annual event and the following years saw the celebration grow
until it was formalized as an annual festival in 1957.

Pictures of the festival showcase the craziness
that goes on – thousands of smiling revelers covered in red paste sloshing
around in shin-high piles of squashed tomatoes. But one can’t just show up and
start throwing tomatoes willy-nilly – the throwing doesn’t actually begin until
a ham is collected from the top of a greased pole. Yes, you read that right. As
the crowd sings and dances in a spray of water from huge hoses, one participant
squirms his way up the pole to a suspended ham. When the ham is dropped into
the crowd, a gunshot rings out and several large dump trucks begin their slow
roll through the street, dispensing a combined 40 tons of soft tomatoes. From
that point on, it’s madness.

As expected, throwing a tomato into a crowd of
people leaves opportunities for injury, so there are some rules that should be
observed. First, throw tomatoes – and only
tomatoes – as hard as you’d want to be hit – high-speed fruit to the face is
never fun; second, wear protective goggles to prevent eye injuries; third,
don’t rip off anyone’s clothing, which has been known to happen; and lastly,
when the second gunshot rings out, the throwing stops.

It’s likely that the original tomato throwers
never imagined that their little brawl would turn into a massive annual food
fight. Over the years the festival has grown into a phenomenon that regularly
sees about 40,000 people descend on the tiny town of Bunol.
The town itself only has about 10,000 inhabitants, so for this event it’s best
to stay in Valencia, an easy 30-minute drive away.

Check
out the hotel deals below and get ready to party in the messiest way possible.
Get the goggles ready!